Now about the texture, I see you've got a lot of noise going on there especially in the face and tail.

Noise = random lone pixels or clusters thrown about that don't communicate any form color or shape and just clutter the image. Look at that castlevania warg I posted, he doesnt have any artifacts (noise) in his fur but the texture of it is done with long strands of lighter color.

If you dont want your critter to have hair as long as the castlevania wolf you should just draw the hair strand texture where a lighter color meets a darker one like you did in its belly.

What is this?It seems like you want to draw a fox?Why not just draw a fox and leave all that oc stuff, the big dreamy eyes, the creative marks etc for later?Look up references, study how the thing actually looks.It also helps estimating how the texture is supposed to look.

I am going to defend myself on the anatomy stuff, just a bit. Its not a fox, its a dog. The constrained proportions of the canvas itself (it has to be 100x100 for an icon) meant that I had to do something with the head in order to fit it and get as much detail as possible using the pose that was given (alas, my last request). The sketch was done where I couldn't look at a reference as well, no phones allowed in driver's ed (yet, somehow, I am allowed to doodle the entire time right under the teacher's nose? I'll never understand..) I'm currently working on retexturing the piece, mainly to get rid of the noise and fix the strange texture in the legs. (I'm also working on a horse pixel, but the sketch is giving me problems, my equine anatomy is very sketchy at best)

Normally I'd just move on (only because this was a request), but honestly that's a huge mistake and I think it needs to be fixed. I'm taking the time to go back and reshade/texture, bringing the head down a bit won't hurt and probably won't take much time. The legs are really bugging me too, especially the left front..

Edit- Neck brought down, the legs were also trimmed up. I also edited the texturing of the fur, and tried to get rid of the noise as well.

That dog is a lot bulkier than what you have and the headshape is still off.The ears and eyes need to go up, muzzle needs to be broader and a mouth won't hurt since the part where the white meets the brown isn't where the mouth is.Also the "knees" are the same height the "ellbow" is and tails don't come out of butts, they are elongated spines.Your texturing suggests long fur, that dog has very short fur.At times like these, less is more.

Your new drawing / texture was *much* better than the last, but it still has a lot to go as far as form / construction goes. I did some refinement of 9_6's edit to show a bit more about texture of varying sizes/shapes and proper construction:

Head size / face/nose shape has a lot to do with the appearance of what sort of animal it was. I too thought it was a fox until you said otherwise.

I think I mentioned it before, but 9_6 is correct that you should put away the fancy for now and get familiar with the forms of what it is you'd like to draw a bit better. You can't reference from the web any original 'fantasy-pets' you created to help you get familiar with specific forms. You're best off referencing and drawing *actual* species, and drawing those until you're familiar with them. Then, and only then, should you take the liberty of combining them like some kind of mad scientist and create your own thing. At that point, you'll have enough experience with the anatomy of different species that you can pick and choose what proportions you'd like to have from what species and be able to draw them accurately.

And regarding the horse, all you have to do is look up a reference like you did with the dog and copy its proportions a bit, using some portion of the animal as a guide to the rest of your proportions. You seem to have a lot better idea on lighting and form than you did before, so I feel like you can do it.